Accessing HDD as storage

reykjavik · 2015-10-09 07:17:41

Hi Everybody,

I'd like to apologize in foresight if this has been answered before, or is written in the Wiki, but I have been going through it and couldn't find an answer to my question, although it might be my dyslexia.

After swapping windows for Arch 2 days ago, I have had a lot of fun setting it up, and everything has been going well, besides one thing; I can't access my HDD. I wiped my SSD, which has windows on it, to make it fully dedicated to Linux, I thought it was better to not keep windows on it since I might go back to a convenient environment instead of configuring one I'd enjoy more in the long run, the problem is that all my files are on my HDD, which I did not partition, because I thought I only had to partition my SSD. I now have an internal HDD that doesn't have the ability to be mounted due to an error.

My question is, can I access it without formatting/partitioning it?

If I indeed have to partition it, is there a way to back it up beside the one given in the wiki? I attempted it and it didn't work too well, only 20 gb got copied:

[acetyl@Reykjavik ~]$ sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdc bs=512 conv=noerror,sync      
38332865+0 records in
38332865+0 records out
19626426880 bytes (20 GB) copied, 176.69 s, 111 MB/s

mounting attempt:

[acetyl@Reykjavik ~]$ sudo mount /dev/sdc /mnt
[sudo] password for acetyl: 
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error

       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail or so.

fdisk -l :

[acetyl@Reykjavik ~]$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for acetyl: 
Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/sdb: 119.2 GiB, 128035676160 bytes, 250069680 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000e37ae

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1            2048 104859647 104857600   50G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2       104859648 171968511  67108864   32G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3       171968512 250069679  78101168 37.2G 83 Linux


Disk /dev/sdc: 931.5 GiB, 1000204885504 bytes, 1953525167 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 33553920 bytes

lsblk :

[acetyl@Reykjavik ~]$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
sdb      8:16   0 119.2G  0 disk 
|-sdb1   8:17   0    50G  0 part /
|-sdb2   8:18   0    32G  0 part [SWAP]
`-sdb3   8:19   0  37.2G  0 part /home
sdc      8:32   0 931.5G  0 disk

byte · 2015-10-09 08:07:25

> My question is, can I access it without formatting/partitioning it?

You used it with Windows before? Sure, install the ntfs-3g package and afterwards (perhaps after rebooting) any of the bigger DEs (like KDE or GNOME) should automatically recognize the hard disk and offer you to mount it.

Now, looking at your lsblk/fdisk output - there is no partition or filesystem to be seen (sda is the HDD in question?).
What have you done (the exact command) that may have caused that?
In the worst case you'll never see those files again.

edit:
Wait, you overwrote sdc with sda and then you tried to mount sdc? That made absolutely sure that you'll never get those files again, if that's really where they were.

Last edited by byte (2015-10-09 08:09:41)

reykjavik · 2015-10-09 19:59:48

Yeah I just don't really know how to do it, since it won't let me use the whole device instead of a single partition, that I don't have because I haven't partitioned the HDD.

Also it said on the man that

 # dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=512 conv=noerror,sync

So I asume I tried it the correct way, no?

sdc doesn't matter at all, it's just a backup seagate I have. When I installed arch it didn't notify me of any adjustments to my HDD (sda), I didn't touch it in any way.

I'm unsure what the proper response is to this problem.

Last edited by reykjavik (2015-10-09 20:08:17)

Trilby · 2015-10-09 21:02:17

If sdc doesn't matter, why were you trying to mount sdc? Is the data drive sda or sdc?

If you want to mount a partition from sda, you need to specify the partition. You can't mount a device. If there is only one partition you would use the following:

mnt /dev/sda1 /mnt

But currently there is no partition listed on sda or sdc. If you typed a dd command wrong, there is a very good chance you've destroyed the partition table and the data is (essentially) unrecoverable (there are some data-recovery methods that could work, but they are not trivial.)

How was sda formatted previously? How was it partitioned and what filesystems did it use?

Also, as sda and sdc are identical sizes, how do/did you know which one was your data drive and which one was the backup drive? Was the backup drive potentially unformatted/unpartitioned prior to these attempts, or did it also have a filesystem on it?

reykjavik · 2015-10-09 23:51:12

I tried mounting sdc solely to see if the same problem would occur as with sda; that it has to be partitioned

The data drive is the sda, sdc is my seagate that only a folder with some irrelevant movies on it.

I typed the command how it was mentioned in the disk cloning man ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Di … _hard_disk ) , I doubt it was done wrong, I hope, at least.

It was never partitioned as far as I know, I never changed anything about it, it just worked perfectly on windows. Then I swapped my ssd (sdb) to linux by partitioning the whole thing into 3 partitions dedicated to arch linux, and it doesn't work on linux because it doesn't have partitions. I don't know what filesystems I used in all honesty, windows 7 just automatically noticed it being mounted and it worked.

sda is an internal HDD, it has always been inside my desktop and is the only internal storage besides my SSD, so that's how I know it is the HDD I thought it was. sdc is the same size, but sdc is my seagate storage because it was detached for a long amount of time, and I attached it after seeing sda and sdb on the lsblk.

The backup drive has been unpartitioned since the beginning, as it is in the same state as my storage disk ( sda ) , I wanted to back up sda, then partition it, I tried finding out if its' impossible to back up unpartitioned drives but I didn't find anything so I asumed it was okay to try.

Something that changed: I rebooted my pc and it seems to have changed the names of my drivers:

[acetyl@Reykjavik ~]$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
sdb      8:16   0 931.5G  0 disk 
sdc      8:32   0 119.2G  0 disk 
|-sdc1   8:33   0    50G  0 part /
|-sdc2   8:34   0    32G  0 part [SWAP]
`-sdc3   8:35   0  37.2G  0 part /home
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

I don't really know why this happened since I didn't mess with it

EDIT:

PS; thank you for the helpfulness and quick responses, I appreciate it quite a lot

Last edited by reykjavik (2015-10-09 23:51:53)

Trilby · 2015-10-09 23:56:32

reykjavik wrote:

Something that changed: I rebooted my pc and it seems to have changed the names of my drivers:

That's common. This is why I wanted to know how you knew which drive was which. You cannot rely on the block device (sda,sdb,sdc) names remaining consistent.

If you were using the drives before, they were partitioned. They may have had just a single partition, but they could not be used without a partition table and file system.

Do you have a windows disk around to see if you can still get access to the data on the drives?

reykjavik · 2015-10-10 08:06:46

Trilby wrote:

reykjavik wrote:
Something that changed: I rebooted my pc and it seems to have changed the names of my drivers:
That's common. This is why I wanted to know how you knew which drive was which. You cannot rely on the block device (sda,sdb,sdc) names remaining consistent.
If you were using the drives before, they were partitioned. They may have had just a single partition, but they could not be used without a partition table and file system.
Do you have a windows disk around to see if you can still get access to the data on the drives?

Sadly I don't, but I'll figure out a way to install it, thanks for the help anyway.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-10-09 07:17:41

Accessing HDD as storage

#2 2015-10-09 08:07:25

Re: Accessing HDD as storage

#3 2015-10-09 19:59:48

Re: Accessing HDD as storage

#4 2015-10-09 21:02:17

Re: Accessing HDD as storage

#5 2015-10-09 23:51:12

Re: Accessing HDD as storage

#6 2015-10-09 23:56:32

Re: Accessing HDD as storage

#7 2015-10-10 08:06:46

Re: Accessing HDD as storage

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